Wednesday

Oct 24, 2018 at 10:57 AMOct 25, 2018 at 4:13 PM

Another hurricane season is upon us, and another devastating storm has flattened many people’s homes and businesses, disrupted people’s lives, caused death, and compromised the health care system. This time it is Hurricane Michael, and my Disaster Medical Assist Team (DMAT) is deployed to Panama City, to the area where the hurricane made landfall.

We are 33 members of the MA-1 Disaster Medical Assist Team (Massachusetts-1 DMAT), supplemented by some of our colleagues from Rhode Island, Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma, and as always we are boots on the ground when and where we are needed. Within our extended team we have a broad spectrum of medical professionals including doctors, physician assistants, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists and mental health workers, as well as other staff with expertise in communications, security and safety. Our goal is to provide excellent medical care, even in austere conditions. This is enabled by the cache of supplies that is deployed from the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) and a close working relationship with local, state, federal, and non-government organizations.

DMATs are response teams that can be activated as part of the Health and Human Service’s NDMS medical response during time of disaster, when the medical infrastructure of a community is compromised. The purpose of NDMS is to support state, local, tribal, and territorial authorities in response to medical needs that may arise from a disaster. NDMS also supports the military and Veterans Health Administration healthcare systems in caring for combat casualties if the need for medical care exceeds their capacity.

DMATs are made up of civilian, disaster-response-trained people who are intermittent federal employees. That is, we are called up to serve when the need arises and our skills are required. NDMS has a 30-plus-year history and has participated in over 300 deployments in response to disasters domestically (including hurricanes, floods, as medical readiness in case of a disaster at a major planned event such as the Presidential Inauguration, and for any other disaster that has medical care needs), and as representatives of the U.S. in international responses (for example in response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti).

Here in Panama City it seems like almost every tree was broken or uprooted, and so many homes and businesses were destroyed or damaged to varying degrees. There were two hospitals in town. One is apparently destroyed beyond salvage and will need to be rebuilt from the ground up. The other has significant damage and will need extensive rebuilding and repairs, although it is intact enough to keep the emergency department and certain other limited areas open and functioning.

Essentially all the doctors’ offices, clinics, and other health care providers were impacted and are not able to see patients. For this mission we have set up a mobile emergency department in the parking lot of the damaged, but open, local hospital in order to support their ER as they provide care to the community.

This open, but severely damaged hospital is a Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) facility. From information I found on their website, HCA is “one of the nation’s leading providers of healthcare services ... made up of locally managed facilities that include 178 hospitals and 119 freestanding surgery centers located in 20 U.S. states and in the United Kingdom.” Part of their mission statement says “above all else, we are committed to the care and improvement of human life.”

From my interactions with them on this mission I am very happy to say that HCA is “walking the walk.” They have gone above and beyond to support this community, supplying food and housing to many of the responders that have come to help begin the rebuilding, and responding to so many of the needs of the local people. And the dedicated hospital staff is coming to work despite their own personal losses.

The community here is full of so many kind, resilient and caring people. Many of the patients we are seeing are brought in by a caring neighbor, friend or family member who was “checking up” to see if that elderly person next door was OK.

I have just rotated to the night shift, and in the wee hours of the morning have finally had time to sit down to write my column. OK, not really sit down, but at least type for a bit between the patients with chain saw injuries (a very common injury over the last several days as people clear debris), broken bones (from people falling and debris falling on them), flareups of medical issues (from loss of the medical infrastructure), and all the other injuries and illnesses that people are suffering.

Once again it is humbling to be among the many people who drive towards the site of a disaster to help, including those rebuilding the infrastructure (getting power lines, cell phone, water, and sewer service back up and running). And it is more than heartwarming to see neighbors helping neighbors and an entire community coming together to support each other in this difficult time.